Our People

Introduction and Homily for the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations of the Hungarian Uprising

St Mary’s Cathedral

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
23/10/2006

Isten hozta. I welcome to this celebration Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, the Governor of New South Wales; His Excellency Mr Lajos Fodor, the Ambassador for Hungary; Mr József Papp, the Consul General for Hungary; the Honorable John Aquilina, Speaker of the New South Wales Parliament; the Honorable James Spiegelman, Chief Justice of New South Wales; Mr Bela Kardos, President of the Hungarian Council of New South Wales; Professor Andrew Abel, Chairman of the Commemoration Committee for the Golden Anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising; fellow priests and distinguished visiting clergy; Hungarian Australians and friends of Hungary.

I am sorry that I must celebrate Mass today in English. On the first anniversary of priesthood I was in Budapest with my parents, only months after the Soviets had withdrawn. As a Dominican I enjoyed discovering that under our hotel were the ruins of the mediæval priory and that the restaurant was called ‘The Dominican’ in its honour. I managed to track down the more recent Dominican Church, a grand baroque basilica which had been returned to the Order’s care only a few months before. I asked if I could offer Mass there and was referred to the elderly sacristan who spoke to me in Hungarian. I indicated that I knew no Hungarian, but she simply spoke to me talk more slowly and more loudly in Hungarian. Clearly she believed that deep down all human beings speak Hungarian. My apologies that this is not the case!

You are all most welcome in this Cathedral Church of Sydney. It is fitting that we celebrate a half century since the Hungarian uprising in a cathedral as the Church was one of the few voices for the dignity and rights of every human person and the demands of the common good during Eastern Europe’s dark days of communism. We recall especially József Cardinal Mindszenty, a controversial figure, but a symbol like our late great John Paul II of opposition to both Nazism and Communism. Mindszenty suffered for his remorseless insistence on the rights of his people and his Church vis-à-vis totalitarianism and state-atheism. Fifty years ago this week he was released from prison and shared in the Hungarian people’s brief period of freedom. He did not live to see his dream fully realised. But he would be very pleased that many of his friends and flock did. So it is with pleasure that I invite representatives of our sister Christian churches and of the Hungarian community to address us before we proceed with our Mass.

I preach today from a pulpit in a Catholic cathedral in a free land. Here we take for granted that though not all agree with what I say and what the Church says, I am free to say it and it will generally get a hearing without recriminations. In modern Australia the freedom to think, speak and live as we choose is regarded as the norm, not a luxury.

It is not so today in North Korea. As the international spotlight – or should I say Geiger-counter – is turned on that country we see one of the last surviving communist dictatorships where millions of dollars are spent on arms while millions of people starve. The regime threatens the security of its neighbours as well as its own people. This so-called “Democratic Republic” has never tried democracy and its people lack the most basic freedoms.

But it need not always be so. What we celebrate today is in fact a beacon of hope to people such as the North Koreans. Half a century ago we might have gathered for Mass in Hungary not in bewilderment caused by the bishop’s ignorance of the Hungarian language, but in perplexity caused by fear for our lives and liberty, and in confusion caused by anger at a regime no-one really wanted and the breakdown of trust and hope amongst so many. Half a century ago in Hungary the Cardinal was in prison, our Catholic schools had been stolen, and many public expressions of our faith were illegal.

Yet on this very day the students marched and thousands joined in. When they sought to broadcast their aspirations on the radio they were detained. When the crowd demanded their release, they were fired upon by State Security. News spread quickly and soon a demonstration had become a national uprising and the government had fallen. It was a moment of idealism and optimism.

Soviet reprisals were however swift and terrible. Budapest was invaded by air strikes and tanks. Thousands were killed and many more arrested. Prime Minister Imre Nagy, whom many now honour with Cardinal Mindszenty as the symbols of resistance to the communist menace, was executed. Two hundred thousand fled as refugees. The brutal recovery of communist control led many to despair of communism ever being defeated. But because of the pluck and virtue of a group of heroes, the whole world had seen the vicious and godless occupation of Hungarian soil for what it was. In the free world people marvelled at the courage shown during the Hungarian Uprising—and wept at the brutal Soviet reprisals.

My own parents were courting at the time while attending the Melbourne Olympics. The Australian fans consistently cheered the Hungarian athletes as a statement of support for the freedom fighters at home. My father was amongst those who loudly supported the Hungarian water polo team in the famous “Blood in the Water” match against the Soviet Union. When a Hungarian was forced to leave the pool with blood streaming from his eye, a riot almost broke out. The game was called early, with Hungary leading 4-0 and the Hungarians went on to win the gold medal.

Hungary’s terrible loss of a quarter of a million of its best and brightest as refugees was gain for countries such as Australia which received them. Virtue never goes unrewarded: 35 years later the last uninvited Soviets left Hungarian soil and the children and grandchildren of the heroes of 1956 danced in the streets. Mindszenty and Nagy have both been honoured at last with proper burials in their beloved Budapest. My wish today is not to revive terrible memories or to glory in the defeat of enemies: though such things should never be forgotten lest the evils be repeated and the good not honoured. Rather, I want to reflect with you upon the beliefs that led to the Hungarian Uprising and to the fruits that flowed from it.

This Mass is part-organised by friends of the Hungarian Freedom-Fighters. That name could conjure paprika-flavoured terrorists. But the word ‘fighter’ did not refer to vengeance, violence and vileness, those base human instincts that too often masquerade as a love of liberty. The word ‘fighter’ did not refer to beating up opponents so much as to determination, perseverance, patience in the cause of right. It referred to ‘fortitude’: that ancient human virtue and ever-new gift of the Holy Spirit which enables us to persevere in the good even when it is hard. And freedom, in this phrase ‘freedom-fighter’, refers not merely to the absence of oppressors or to the opportunity to do as we please, including becoming oppressors ourselves: such freedom is never worth fighting for. The only freedom worth our blood and souls, is the freedom to be the very beings we are called to be, the freedom to live and love, to lead and serve, in accord with the laws of humanity and of God.

Hungary has always been known for its ‘freedom-fighting’ fortitude. Many enemies have conspired against the freedom of Hungary – foreign invaders, home-grown tyrants, self-interested and corrupt officials, or that awful mixture of all three which was Hungarian communism in the shadow of the Soviet. But Our Lord warned that sometimes when you cast out one devil a whole legion return to fill the vacuum. Such a diabolical legion could be the mix of modern Western consumerism and old world gangsterism which has swept across much of the former Eastern bloc. From the West can blow not only the gentle breeze of freedom but the foul wind of obsessive autonomy and its lethal separation of freedom from truth. This feeds what Pope John Paul II called ‘the culture of death’ and Pope Benedict XVI called ‘the dictatorship of relativism’. Hungarian resistance is still necessary despite the tearing down of the Iron curtain.

Hungarians have shown they can resist. Yet this is not always glamorous: the photographs of those months in ’56 are awful still to look at and the accounts harrowing to read. But people live in freedom today because some of you and your parents and grandparents feared loss of faith and liberty more than Soviet bullets. Why should freedom have mattered so much to them and why should it matter so much to us still? Not just the enjoyment of freedom but the responsible exercise of it? In Australia we can be tempted to think: we’ve got all we need, we’re comfortable, secure, at peace: so what does it matter who controls us and how and in whose interests?

It does matter and it matters very much. First, because if we are not free, we may well live in paranoia. Am I being lied to? When will they come for me? What is that siren I hear? What do they want me to do? What will they do to me? Whom can I trust? Whom must I betray? Whose side are my own family, friends, priests, bishop on? Such a climate of suspicion and intimidation makes it impossible to live in integrity, to bring up children in the way we believe they should grow up, critically to question what we are told, openly to profess and practice what we believe, and so on. God cannot be honoured and human beings cannot flourish in such a situation.

Secondly, if we are not free, we lose our sense of what it is that makes human beings matter, marks them out as special, what is the core of their dignity as the children of God. When we lose the sense of our own dignity and that of our fellows, we do not lose the dignity itself – for it is intrinsic, God-given, for keeps – but we do risk shrinking in our own eyes. We grow gradually blind to the possibilities for a better life, for human nobility and for real happiness. We give up on building a future, individually and together and under God’s grace. We lose faith in ourselves, we lose love for our fellows, and we lose hope in the future.

The Lord Jesus lived in a land not at peace but ruled by enemy-occupiers. He too gathered a small band of heroes, and like the heroes of ’56, they grew and grew but often met bloody martyrdom. Yet he promised that when he left his faithful ones the Father would send the Holy Spirit to teach and guide them, to strengthen them and make heroes and saints of them, and bring them ultimate peace and joy. The blood of martyrs became the seed of a new future for the Church.

We rejoice that after decades of oppression the people of Hungary finally have their independence and freedom. They also have international admiration for the fortitude they demonstrated in the years of Soviet oppression. The great heroes of ’56, alive or dead, do not boast or gloat over the defeat of their enemies. Such good as was done was God’s work as much as theirs, and there is still much to be done to live out the ideals of the freedom fighters. We have not yet reached that time when all the gifts and fruits of God’s Holy Spirit are apparent in the use that Hungary makes of its much deserved freedom. Nor are we here in Australia perfect models of how freedom might best be used. A peace built on justice, a freedom not just from oppressors but for the common good, a joy taken in the good done and still to be done, a hopefulness demonstrated by people building families, businesses, communities and churches together for the sake of the future – these will be the signs that God’s Holy Spirit is truly at work.

May God continue to pour out his grace on the people of Hungary. May St Stephen and all the saints and martyrs of Hungary rejoice today in the freedom and faith of the Hungarian people. And may they look too on this little corner of New Hungary that is Sydney and Australia. May we treasure the freedom for which many have struggled and which we are blessed to enjoy, and may we always use it wisely and lovingly for the building up of God’s kingdom on earth.